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via @ryttu3k

We literally have rainforests. We have a region called New England because it goes crimson in autumn. The Hunter Valley gets flooded every La Nina and there's huge controversy in Sydney because developers keep building on flood plains. Melbourne is famous for having incredibly touchy weather that changes every five minutes. We have a trail in Tasmania that people won't hike in winter because they WILL die from hypothermia if they aren't completely prepared and very lucky. We have a cyclone season. We once had a cyclone go so far inland it went to Alice Springs - for Americans, imagine a hurricane that starts in Florida and ends up in Iowa.

We're a desert country, yes, but here, in Sydney, we get more rainfall every year than London. During the 2022 La Nina we got more rainfall in a week than London does in a year. A desert country means we get wet seasons. In some parts of Australia that's yearly, in other parts it's a Game of Thrones-esque multi year cycle of wet and dry and we never know in advance how long which part will last, only year by year.

You want to know what the biggest desert in the world is? It's Antarctica. The Sahara isn't the standard for what deserts look like, it's an exception, not the norm.

Fantastic article!! The guys looking for it were fish researchers who saw it one time, knew instantly it was an undescribed species, and then tried for nearly 20 years to find and document it!

It's a type of ghost pipefish, related to seahorses, and it floats around coral reefs looking like a piece of algae and hunting unsuspecting prey

They are, of course, named after Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street!

Later on it the project, they got citizen science involved, and people across the Pacific started reporting sightings of snuffy fish from all over!